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Nixscho Romano
Action Girl *Agent Mulder: Compared to normal people, everyone on the team comes off this way, but Coleridge takes the cake. Rose is his default Scully, though often it isn't disbelief in the paranormal that drives her but skepticism regarding Coleridge's methods. *All Myths Are True: Coleridge certainly thinks so. *Ambiguous Disorder: Everyone suspects this about Coleridge. All we know is that he is severely paranoid, has little empathy, is given to fits of rage, and focuses obsessively on his research. Later episodes begin to call into question his ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, though the Mind Screw nature of these moments makes it impossible for the viewer to be sure either. **Quentin reports that grad-school age Coleridge made it onto his "short list for people who may be sociopaths." He implies in saying so that Coleridge is better now than he was, though certain traits are definitely still there. **To say nothing of Quentin himself. Although he normally seems to be The Stoic, there's some indication that he legitimately has no real emotions at all, and that is his devotion to Coleridge is a reaction of someone who wants nothing, but feels the need for an objective purpose. **Possibly an enforced trope in-universe. Coleridge has expressed his opinion that modern psychology focuses far too heavily on meaningless labels. *Ambiguous Gender: The cat, though unspecified is a better term. On the few occasions when gendered pronouns are used, Rose uses masculine, Quentin uses feminine, and Coleridge, the actual owner, never uses such pronouns. *Asexual: Definite hints of this for Coleridge. Such as this bit of dialogue: :Colerdige: (after a seductress has flashed her breasts) You realize, the mammary gland is essentially a modified sweat gland atop a base of adipose tissue. :Seductress: Your point being? :Coleridge: So why would I want to look at your sweaty fat? :Seductress: You're not like other men I know. :Coleridge: Do I look like a hungry infant instead? :Seductress: If you mean empty and childish, then yes. The case is less spelled out for Quentin, but given that he has no apparent desire for any worldly pleasure, the effect seems about the same. Rose at least had a boyfriend, (sort of, they realized they had been Fust Friends all along), but she seems not to be bothered by the idea of remaining a virgin for the rest of her life. *Bathos *Cats Are Magic: The team cat is possibly psychic or otherworldly, or so Coleridge is convinced. It certainly looks the part, being entirely black and having Mismatched Eyes, one blue, one green, as well as possessing Ambiguous, or at least unspecified, Gender. **One episode implies that the cat may be a full-blown Eldritch Abomination in A Form You Are Comfortable With. *Conspiracy Theorist *Crazy Survivalist: Coleridge was this for a while. Then he decided to get more proactive in his methods. *Faking The Dead: Coleridge does this once onscreen, and is implied to have done it more than once. IT's played ambiguously at first, with a legitimate funeral being held, the only oddity being that Rose actually seems happy. It's eventually revealed that she wasn't in on it, but merely knew Coleridge well enough to expect this kind of thing from him. Or that she was in denial about his death. **Discussed when it is suggested that Coleridge could never be suicidal because he is too self-obsessed: you can't observe yourself committing suicide. It's then proposed that he is pseudocidal instead. *Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Exactly what exists is up for debate, but the show suggests that any number of things may exist. The whole show runs on rejection of Meta Origin, so this is hardly surprising. *Fearless Fool: According to Word of God, the main characters are all fearless in different ways. Coleridge is described as "fearless like a cornered animal." *Five Man Band: A meta-example. Word of God has it that the five man band was considered in the crafting of the dynamics of the main trio - if it had completely fallen apart. In an ideal world, Coleridge would be the smart guy, Rose would be the lancer, and Quentin would bethe big guy. Instead, Coleridge is the leader, Quentin is the lancer, and Rose is expected to be the chick. *Final Girl: Rose seems to take inspiration from this trope. She's decidedly the Token Wholesome amongst her friends, and finds that Nature Adores A Virgin. (She also seems to be playing off certain Virgin Power tropes; she hasn't met a unicorn yet, but you get the sense it would like her.) It's a deconstruction, however, as despite the fact that supernatural events tend to spare her, she is nonetheless a Weirdness Magnet. *Genius Bonus: The story crawls with obscure references to mythology, religion, folklore, cryptozoology, history, art Medieval science, and literature. Viewers Are Geniuses sets in, as well. *Hates Being Touched: One of Coleridge's many character tics. *Heterosexual Life Partners: Quentin and Coleridge. Though all things considered, heterosexual may not be so much the case as asexual. *Hypocritical Humor: Despite owning an absurd number of guns, Coleridge is strongly in favor of gun control, his rationale being that people who hoard guns pose a significant threat to others (that is, to him), and besides, he has enough guns already. *Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The titles tend to be one word, rarely English in origin, and are often philosophical or mythological references. Examples include Gnosis, Maschalismos, and Gotterdammerung. *I Know Your True Name: Acknowledged. Word of God notes that Coleridge is well aware of it and would not be above adopting a false name and making everyone on his team do likewise, but refused to confirm or deny that Coleridge had actually done so. *It's Always Spring: Averted. It's usually winter, but there is some seasonal change. *Libation for the Dead *Magic Versus Science: Coleridge is very hung up on this, perceiving most scientists to be Flat Earth Atheists and Arbitrary Skeptics. To them he’s a laughingstock (or at least he thinks he is. Not many have even heard of him). **Subverted however, in that he believes himself to a scientist, and the only true scientist at that, because the rest ignore evidence to fit an ideology. *Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Nearly everything. *Mind Screw: While the main plot is more or less sensible, background details are thrown which threaten to make the whole thing impossible to understand. This is apparently intentional, as the work is meant to be impossible to understand. To quote the author: :''"Romano is a bit like a myth. When I was young, I had an illustrated book of traditional faeries. It terrified me. I realized that such a book could only be made when people looked out and realized what they did not know. So I made an unknowable universe." *Mismatched Eyes: The team cat has them. Coleridge is convinced it is psychic, though not because of the eyes specifically. *Mr. Exposition: Coleridge is this. Sometimes to Rose, and sometimes when he mutters things to himself as he tries to figure things out. He’s an Unreliable Expositor at times, too, to make matters more complicated. *Nerves of Steel: Quentin. According to Word of God, the main characters are all fearless in different ways. Quentin is fearless on the grounds of having little to no fear to control in the first place. *No Last Name Given: Quentin and Rose. Coleridge's surname (Sleet) is revealed in a gag. *Old Flame: Coleridge's ex-girlfriend (where girlfriend is a term used very loosely), appears in an episode (actually two, one is a cameo). This happens at the same time that he is investigating phenomena best described as "the dead consuming the living". Coleridge decides this is probably not a coincidence and suspects that she may be planning to attack him. *Omniglot: Not extreme, but it's worth noting that every member of the trio is multilingual. Coleridge is identified as knowing a number of languages, including Latin and Greek, and some others beside. He also converses with Quentin in Russian, largely because Rose does not know Russian. She later reveals, however, that she does know Spanish, which leaves Coleridge feeling threatened, as he does not. **Suddenly Always Knew That: Largely downplayed, as most of Coleridge's language skills (along with his general breadth of knowledge) can be handwaved by the nearly ten years he spent in isolated study. Some of the other language skills are foreshadowed by the characters reading in other languages. *Our Monsters Are Different: Played with all over the board. More often than not, monsters are based on their oldest depictions (e.g. the vampires), but sometimes appear in different interpretations at the same time, making it unclear what is true. *Powers That Be: To take a truly Agent Mulder interpretation, these include any number of nebulously related secret organizations, an apparently alien entity whose idea of communication involves encoding messages in patterns of improbable events, a demonic being who may or may not be the living personification of people's desire to kill in his name, a digital intelligence that is the sum total of all interconnected computers, and Coleridge's cat. *Properly Paranoid: When you come down to it, Coleridge is right that there's an awful lot of weird stuff out there... *Sarcastic Devotee: Rose constantly criticizes Coleridge's personal flaws, but never fails to do her part in a mission. *Science is Bad: One of the villain leaders thinks so, not so much because it leads to evil as because it is pointless. He believes that the universe is fundamentally incomprehensible and that any understanding we have is our own inability to understand that we don’t understand, meaning we have been wasting our time concerning unapplied science and getting very lucky with applied science. Surprisingly, it is Coleridge who argues with him, but mostly because Coleridge hates him. *Ship Tease: Word of God states that he teases Rose and Coleridge because it amuses him, but will never go through with it because he finds their ten year age gap too unsettling. *Shirtless Scene: Somehow Coleridge manages to get far more of these than the considerably more muscular Quentin. They tend to hit home the fact that Coleridge is very very thin. *Stoic Woobie *Surreal Horror: Appears fairly often, especially when the it is unclear whether the events are real or not. Which is rather often. *Temporary Love Interest *Terrified of Germs: Coleridge zigzags this. On the one hand, he is obsessively neat and constantly sanitizes. On the other, he tends not to avoid dirty situations and even admits the futility of attempting to sanitize his life. *Thanks for the Mammary: Coleridge manages this, courtesy of Rose. Since he wasn't looking and Rose isn't exactly busty, it appears she assumed he wasn't aware and said nothing. Later he momentarily gazes at this hand before reaching for his beloved hand sanitizer. *The Paranoiac *Therapy Is For The Weak: Coleridge believes so. And he's not about to be brainwashed by those mindbending medications either. *The Watson: Rose is technically this, because her inexperience makes Coleridge talk down to her. Subverted in that he mostly does it to be condescending. Also subverted in that she talks up to him to see if he’ll keep up, making much of her dialogue Genius Bonus. *Token Wholesome: Rose. It plays into her role as a Final Girl deconstruction. **It's revealed at one point that this trope is present throughout her entire wardrobe, which is quite small to boot. It's also worth noting that most of the show is set during winter, and the cast wears appropriate clothing. *Training From Hell: Coleridge's nearly decade long retreat from society to master an enormous amount of knowledge is strongly implied to be the scholarly version of this. *Virgin Power: Rose's virginity is taken to be a factor if not the entire reason that she tends to draw out the supernatural. She's pointed out on one occasion that there's really no evidence that it isn't a more intrinsic trait to herself, as there is no control group, but Coleridge believes she oughtn't to mess with a good thing. **Technical Virgin: Averted. It's eventually disclosed that Rose has never even held hands with a man (or a woman, for that matter). *True Companions: The trio. It's especially notable for Coleridge, a man incapable of trusting others, who slowly comes to be unable to accept that Quentin, or Rose, eventually, could betray him. **Getting to this stage isn't pretty, however. Before Coleridge can conclude that Rose would not betray him, he first decided that she must not betray him. This prompted him to attempt to control her and attempts at severing ties with all of her family and friends. *Wall of Weapons: Coleridge has one. He also has a wall of crosses and holy water. *Weirdness Magnet: Quentin and Rose are considered to be this, and Coleridge considers it a valuable skill. As for Coleridge himself, he seems to be a Weirdness Magnet Magnet, and thus brings weird things to himself indirectly. **Although he was the one to find his cat, so... ***Actually it found him. *Affably EvilSoft-Spoken Sadist *Sugar and Ice Personality *Implacable Man: Quentin can be one. *Multiple Choice Past: Quentin's backstory is flagrantly self-contradictory, and he seems to be fully aware of it. The show seems to portray it as all true. *Anti-Hero: The whole cast to some degree. Coleridge's mild Blue and Orange Morality make him the most noticeable example.